60 "HIGH LIFE."
ajar, and was aware that Lady Margaret was going along the
corridor, he whistled with all his might, though it took away
his breath, so unwonted was the performance; and involun-
tarily he fell into a solemn and stately measure, like the
*" Dead March in Saul." Still, he responded to her suggestion
better than Carlo had done, and he made her laugh-though
he was happily unconscious of it-at his doleful strain. She
called him to herself "the melancholy Jaques," and said,
though he was a product of the age, a specimen of the kind
existed in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
 But I don't know that Lady Margaret thought the worse
of him, or liked him the less, because of her private wit at his
expense; though he-being, like other young men, stupid where
young girls are concerned-might have been at that date hurt
and offended, and even imagined that she despised him
because she made game of him.
 One morning, as an excuse for his elegant idleness-of
which he began to feel slightly ashamed, when he was forced
to see how busy this delicate little girl was, and generally on
the behalf of others-he repeated to her the speech he had
addressed to his mother, of his wanting a modern crusade to
induce him to put on his armour.
 But there is a crusade going on all around us, for every
one of us, always," she said, opening her eyes wide. "We
have never been without one since"--she stopped, but he
knew what she meant.
 I quite envy those fellows who have their own way to make
in the world," he observed on another occasion, still with an
underlying motive of self-defence, and speaking in allusion to
her younger brothers' work in their military and naval schools.